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Article: Addressing seasonal affective disorder: about 20 percent of the U.S. population suffers "winter doldrums." Employers can take some simple corrective measures to prevent adverse effects on personal lives and work productivity.
- Article from:
- The Journal of Employee Assistance
- Article date:
- January 1, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Employee Assistance Professionals. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Winters challenge our mood state, levels of alertness and energy, and ability and motivation to initiate and complete work. Lamentably, these challenges occur at the same time work pressure often increases on its own seasonal cycle. The problem is worse in the northern half of the United States and in Canada and at equivalent latitudes in Europe and Asia.
It is not simply the cold weather that causes these problems. Importantly (but not intuitively), a major factor is the long winter night.
As a psychiatry researcher, I have focused on the most serious cases of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), in which we see annual recurrences of major clinical ...